Gunship!

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We know so much about Gunship! that we just have to tell you more. New screens and a movie too!

By IGN Staff

A full preview plus a preview update in two days!?! What the heck is going on here!?! No, it's not Gunship! week at IGNPC, it's just that we learned so much about the game on our recent trip to the Microprose studios in Maryland that we didn't have time to get it all into our initial preview yesterday before publish time. We've already told you about the backstory, the helicopters you can expect to fly, and some of the missions included in the game, but in today's brief update we fill you in on some of the more specific gameplay elements you'll find in Microprose's upcoming helicopter sim -- everything from rewarding your crew to building your own custom scenarios.

For starters, since Gunship! simulates the movements of an entire combat helicopter squadron, you will be overseeing eight two-man teams throughout their military careers. In addition to controlling the action in the skies, you will also be responsible for rewarding your crew for a job well done. At the end of each mission, you will be awarded a certain number of points based on how successful the overall mission went. You can use these points to reward your active crew with promotions and medals. It is entirely your decision to award who you see fit, but remember, while crew members will get better with each promotion, they may also get transferred by command if their services are needed elsewhere, so it's usually a good idea to spread the love around rather than building one super-gunner or uber-pilot only to see him shipped off to another outfit. And while you may think sending the same person out mission after mission might be a great strategy for getting him a quick promotion, your crew's fatigue will increase with every consecutive mission flown, so you'll want to give your crew members some much needed R&R every few missions so they won't get over-stressed.

In terms of comparable scale to other combat sim games, the battlefields in Gunship! are going to be huge, with plenty of action happening both in the air and on the ground. The team at Microprose is promising maps up to 16 kilometers square, with the possibility of over 150 vehicles duking it out in each scenario. But just because there are lots of ground vehicles, don't expect them to be mindless cannon fodder waiting for your encroaching onslaught. They all have objectives of their own, and if you look closely you'll see them traveling in formation, taking the high ground for greater strategic value, and even hiding behind buildings, ridges, and destroyed tanks to avoid the inevitable missile strike from high above. Of course, all of the AI-controlled air units in the game have specific missions and orders as well, and each side is equally balanced in terms of air power, so you'll have to be constantly on the lookout for any incoming bogeys while your cannons are focused on that last tank.

Gunship! will come complete with a battle builder, where you can pick from one of the pre-defined maps and then set a number of variables to create your own scenarios. You'll be in control of almost every variable you can think of, including time of day, weather, nationality, vehicle way points, primary targets, and speed. Now that's a lot of control. The files for these custom battles will only be a couple of hundred kilobytes, so they will be easily transferable via the Internet or email, allowing anyone who has the game to play your scenarios. This feature will hopefully give Gunship! unlimited playability since you're only limited by your creativity.

As we said in our previous preview, Gunship! looks like it's going to be the best helicopter sim to date, and it's certainly a title we're anxious to play in its final state. Don't forget to check out the new screenshots from the game below, as well as one of the cutscenes from the game that Microprose sent our way today.

-- Tal Blevins

02/15/2000

Just last Thursday we visited the Microprose studios in Hunt Valley, Maryland and sat down with Studio Head Robin Matthews and Lead Designer Tim Goodlett to see first hand how things were progressing with Gunship! We have to say that, from what we saw, Gunship! is simply going to blow away the competition. The third title in the Gunship series looks beautiful and is a lot of fun to boot. Just seeing Gunship! gives us complete confidence in Robin's opening statement: "Microprose used to be on the cutting edge of design and technology, and with Gunship!, we're going to prove that Microprose is indeed still alive and well."

The backstory behind Gunship! is a hypothetical what-if situation that may just be closer to actuality than we'd like to admit. With the end of Chechnyan war and the economic situation in Russia falling rapidly, ultra-nationals have seized control of the frail Russian government and have begun rebuilding the economy through militarization. The extreme nationalistic government moves in to the Baltic States to quash several uprising, eventually strengthening the ties between Russia and the former states of the Soviet Union. This action prompts Poland to call upon NATO to intervene in what could possibly become the starting point of WWIII.

Most of the action in Gunship! will take place over the skies of Eastern Europe in five campaigns with at least a dozen missions each. Missions types will include halting major attacks, hunting enemy headquarters, clearing paths for friendly troops, and search & rescue. You'll be expected to fly in numerous weather situations at various times of day, so you had best be prepared for a little bit of everything. You'll take the controls of three different helicopters in Gunship!: two Apaches (the American AH-64D and British Westland), the German Eurocopter Tiger, and the Russian Mil-28 Havoc. As Tim explained it, "Half of the sim sales are in Europe, so we thought it would be nice to let them use their own equipment." In case you don't know already, all of these attack choppers are two-man helicopters, with separate positions for both the pilot and gunner. In Gunship! you can opt to control both at once or just concentrate on one of the stations and let the AI handle the other. However, if you're in for a full simulation, don't expect to multi-tasking to be so easy. "In full-realism mode you really can't work two systems at once," Tim told us. "You have to concentrate on either jumping in the pilot's seat or the gunnery position to be effective."

Yes, there will be a full-realism mode in Gunship! complete with authentic physics, ballistics, and the like. But don't worry if you're not up to the task of piloting a multi-million dollar helicopter into the middle of a realistic battle. Gunship! promises to offer something for the hardcore sim-head as well as the casual gamer who's just looking to blow the crap out of something from a hovering weapons platform. As Tim admits, "We're careful about not calling it just a simulation, because that's not all that it is. The two previous Gunship titles were not deadly accurate sims, but they were extremely fun, and we're looking to bring that same design into Gunship!" This means that although you can pilot your Apache just as if you were a real pilot, you're not forced to read a 500 page manual just to learn how to target an enemy. "The game is designed from the ground up to be scalable," Tim told us, "and it's also set-up to let the player customize the game to their playing style. We've added a lot of things for people who don't want to play an ultra-realistic sim." After all, games are supposed to be fun, right? But they aren't forsaking the realism just for entertainment, and you can expect the same high-quality flight models we've seen in previous Microprose titles.

Graphically, Gunship! is leaps and bounds above any helicopter sim that we've ever seen (or any sim for that matter). Everything is rendered in full 3D (the game will support D3D as well as GLide), including the fully lit cockpit which you can turn transparent if you want to see what's going on below you. As Tim explained it, "We asked real pilots what they actually see when they're in the cockpit, and they had a hard time describing it, but basically they described it as a transparent cockpit." So essentially their brains fill-in the terrain that is obscured by the cockpit, and this effect is simulated in the game. The game world itself looks amazing, and the graphics engine supports full light sourcing, damage mapping, shiny mapping, and high-res textures giving the river valleys, urban settings, and dense forests an incredibly realistic look. We saw one of the smaller 3D cities in the demo at Microprose and it was absolutely immense in comparison to any other sim we've laid our eyes on (about 1.5km square). This really gives you the feeling of flying in the real world since towns aren't made up of a dozen perfectly square buildings. There are even some 3D clouds that you can fly through mixed in with the bitmapped sky, although you probably won't want to take your 'copter up quite that high if you want to live for very long.

Seeing as how helicopter squadrons rely on several ships working in tandem to be effective, Microprose is dedicated to bringing an intense multiplay experience to your computer to simulate the teamwork found in real-life military incursions. Although nothing is set in stone at this point, the development team is hoping to support two players via modem and up to four players with high-band connections in tandem cockpit and multiple helicopter mission-based sorties (both co-op or head-to-head), as well as your standard deathmatch over Microsoft's Gaming Zone. The game will also work in conjunction with the upcoming M1 Tank Platoon! (given the slew of exclamation marks in their upcoming titles, does anyone else think that we might see a name change to Microprose! soon?), which is still in early development. This means you'll be able to provide air support for real-life players manning tanks on the ground below. Very cool! Great, now there I go with the exclamation marks.

As it stands now, Gunship! is going to take the helicopter simulation genre to new heights. We expect great things from Gunship!, and we have no doubt that gamers will have a finely polished and fun sim in their hands shortly after Microprose sends this one off to the duplicators, which shouldn't be long since Gunship! is slated for an April release. We're keeping a close eye on this one and we still know about a lot of stuff we weren't able to cover fully today, so expect to hear even more about Gunship! tomorrow.